The Wisconsin Supreme Court has issued yet another decision in John Doe II, the protracted and secret investigation into whether a political group exercising free political speech rights improperly coordinated with Governor Walker during the recall election. For the second time this year, the Wisconsin Supreme Court directed that the John Doe proceeding be halted based upon the Court’s conclusion that prosecutors did not have a legal basis to investigate these political groups when they commenced John Doe II. The Court found that campaign finance statutes upon which the prosecutors relied violate free political speech rights guaranteed by both the United States Constitution and the Wisconsin Constitution.

Thus, the Court said that the matter is closed, and the evidence seized through subpoenas and search warrants issued as part of the investigation must be returned. That has not yet occurred, and the owners of that property are understandably upset.

The special prosecutor has indicated that he intends to appeal. The only level of appeal left is to the Supreme Court of the United States (SCOTUS), but it is very unlikely SCOTUS would take the case. In the unlikely scenario that SCOTUS were to accept the case, it would more than likely uphold the Wisconsin Supreme Court's decision.

I write because I have indirectly been asked as Wisconsin Attorney General to intervene on behalf of the John Doe targets. The Wisconsin DOJ played a role in the proceedings before the Wisconsin Supreme Court, although it was not a leading role. DOJ represented the judge who was assigned to John Doe II after the initial judge recused herself. The new judge quashed subpoenas issued in the John Doe proceeding, finding that the special prosecutor's theory of the case was not supported by Wisconsin law. The special prosecutor appealed that ruling, and DOJ represented the judge in the Wisconsin Supreme Court.

Last week, the Wisconsin Supreme Court again ordered that the seized evidence be returned to its owners. Given that DOJ represented the judge who first found that the John Doe proceeding was invalid, DOJ certainly has no intention of standing in the way of those orders. The Supreme Court’s order should be carried out forthwith. DOJ has no authority to represent those individual property owners in their effort to enforce the Supreme Court’s order.

This has been a long, unfortunate chapter in Wisconsin's history. The courts have unequivocally rejected the John Doe investigation, both in the manner in which it was carried out, as well as the legal arguments brought by the prosecutors. The Wisconsin Supreme Court has now ordered that the property seized be returned. For everyone involved, the special prosecutor should end the case, and the property seized from the individuals in this case should be returned immediately.

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Bernie Sanders in 2020

Wrongfully Convicted: Penny Brummer

Federal Voting Rights Court Cases

- Gill v. Whitford, (District Court (Case 3:15-cv-00421)) (2015 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 155022 (W.D. Wis., Nov. 17, 2015)), is a federal case challenging the constitutionality of Wisconsin's Republican-drawn legislative-redistricting scheme- One Wisconsin Institute v. Thomsen(U.S. District Court of the Western District of Wisconsin (Case 15-cv-324)) - Frank v. Walker- Since 2011 Wisconsin Republicans have made some 34 changes to Wisconsin election law to keep Republicans in political power (Katelyn Ferral, The Capital Times)

Scariest 14 Words in Politics

I'm from the Republican Party and I'm here to save Social Security and Medicare.

Social Security and Medicare Targeted by Paul Ryan and his Ayn Rand-worshipping Colleagues

"I left as an act of rational self-interest. Having gutted private-sector pensions and health benefits as a result of their embrace of outsourcing, union busting and 'shareholder value' the GOP now thinks it is only fair that public-sector workers give up their pensions and benefits, too. Hence the intensification of the GOP's decades-long campaign of scorn against government workers. Under the circumstances, it is simply safer to be a current retiree rather than a prospective one. If you think Paul Ryan and his Ayn Rand-worshipping colleagues aren't after your Social Security and Medicare, I am here to disabuse you of your naiveté. They will move heaven and earth to force through tax cuts that will so starve the government of revenue that they will be 'forced' to make 'hard choices' - and that doesn't mean repealing those very same tax cuts, it means cutting the benefits for which you worked."

Trump's dog whistles to racists including white municipal police continue. From August 2016 in West Bend, Wisconsin, as reported by Yamiche Alcindor in the New York Times:

Jack Beck, 65, a retired bricklayer who lives in West Bend, said he planned to vote for Mr. Trump.

"Every night in Milwaukee, there is someone being shot, and they make nothing of that until a cop is involved, and then all of a sudden it’s always blamed on the cop," said Mr. Beck, who added that he hoped West Bend’s black population would not increase. He tied much of the unrest in Milwaukee to his belief that black residents do not want to work hard and instead want to use police killings to get handouts from the government.
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"You do not preach and encourage hatred for the Negro and hope to restrict it to that field. It is an old, old story. It is one repeated over and over again in history. When the wolves of hate are loosed on one people, then no one is safe."— Ralph McGillAtlanta Constitution, Oct. 13, 1958A Church, A School

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Spotting Political Prosecutions

Alex Kozinski on liberty

"The right to do what the law does not prohibit, without fear of harassment or punishment, is one of the hallmarks of a free society." — Judge Alex Kozinski, Chief Judge, U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit (Foreword in Sidney Powell's Licensed to Lie: Exposing Corruption in the Department of Justice (Brown Books Publishing Group, 2014))

Wisconsin Misconduct in Public Office

SCR 946.12(3). Misconduct in public office. Any public officer or public employee who does any of the following is guilty of a Class I felony. See link above.

Class-action, civil rights suit against Milwaukee

"For almost a decade, the Milwaukee Police Department has pursued an aggressive and unconstitutional policing strategy promoting large numbers of stops and frisks citywide. Between 2007 and 2015, the department almost tripled their traffic and pedestrian stops, from around 66,000 to around 196,000, following the launch of the program in 2008."

Milwaukee residents have long protested that police officers are conducting stops and frisks of innocent people, and particularly treating people of color as suspects for no good reason, stopping innocent men, women, and children as they try to go about their daily lives. The department conducts far more stops and frisks in the parts of Milwaukee that are predominantly Black or Latino than in other areas."- From the ACLU

Political-legal news

Sea of individual rights

"When conservatives like [Robert] Bork treat rights as islands surrounded by a sea of government powers, they precisely reverse the view of the Founders as enshrined in the Constitution, wherein government powers are limited and specified and rendered as islands surrounded by a sea of individual rights."- Stephen Macedo. The New Right v. the Constitution (Washington: Cato Institute, 1987)

On being police

Scott Walker—Frontman for Rightwingers

"The simplest way I can tell you is we had total and complete unity between the state party, quite frankly, Americans for Prosperity, the Tea Party groups, the Grandsons of Liberty. The [Glenn Beck-instigated] 9/12ers were involved. It was a total and complete agreement that nobody cared who got the credit, that everyone was going to run down the tracks together..." ...

The Strike — The Improbable Story of an Iconic 1886 Painting of Labor Protest

James M. Dennis, professor emeritus of art history at the University of Wisconsin–Madison

President Theodore Roosevelt on Veterans

Republicans are after veterans' benefits: "A man who is good enough to shed his blood for his country is good enough to be given a square deal afterwards. More than that no man is entitled, and less than that no man shall have." - President Theodore Roosevelt. Speech to veterans, Springfield, IL, July 4, 1903

On the Fourth Amendment, back in 1972

"The price of lawful public dissent must not be a dread of subjection to an unchecked surveillance power. Nor must the fear of unauthorized official eavesdropping deter vigorous citizen dissent and discussion of Government action in private conversation."
- Justice Lewis Franklin Powell, Jr., writing for unanimous court in: United States v. United States District Court, 407 U.S. 297 (1972)

Fourth Amendment

The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.

National Weather Sites

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Bertrand Russell

"Those whose lives are fruitful to themselves, to their friends, or to the world are inspired by hope and sustained by joy: they see in imagination the things that might be and the way in which they are to be brought into existence. In their private relations they are not pre-occupied with anxiety lest they should lose such affection and respect as they receive: they are engaged in giving affection and respect freely, and the reward comes of itself without their seeking. In their work they are not haunted by jealousy of competitors, but concerned with the actual matter that has to be done. In politics, they do not spend time and passion defending unjust privileges of their class or nation, but they aim at making the world as a whole happier, less cruel, less full of conflict between rival creeds, and more full of human beings whose growth has not been dwarfed and stunted by oppression."

U.S. Supreme Court Decision - Michigan Dept of State Police v. Sitz

Michael Leon

Michael Leon is a writer living in Madison, Wisconsin. His reporting has been recognized by the Wisconsin Newspaper Association. Leon's writing has appeared nationally in The Progressive, The Advocate, In These Times, CounterPunch and The Champion—the journal of the National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers, and locally in the Isthmus, the Capital Times and the Fitchburg Star. Leon works as a writer, editor, veterans' advocate, and public relations consultant.